Of course ribs are obstacles, but not one that cannot be overcome in every decent bow setup. Yes, every. Show me a hunter that has fears of hitting ribs when he shoots and I will show you an unethical(to me) hunter. What person in their right mind would wander into the deer woods knowing that if they caught a rib they might not get adiquite penitration? Where are they going to aim, the neck or the paunch?

Now for my personal experiance. I have seen deer ribs deflect arrows. It has happened to me in each of the past two seasons. The following picture is of a 3.5 year old buck from fall 2006. As can be seen, the rib is split where the arrow first impacted at a significant downward angle. The arrow then slid up the rib 3-4" without quite enough energy to break through untill next to the spine. I beleive this is when the weakened rib finally split and the arrow continued on. It makes no sence for the rib to have split prior to the arrow sliding up it, the arrow would have penitrated then right away. The head then continued on through the lower part of one vertibra and out the other side.

Something similar happened to me last year as well. In both cases I was shooting a replacable blade chisel tip head, but rather than blaming my BH I am quite certain the fault lies in my setup, inadiquite FOC. I place the blame for this entirely on my own shoulders and am very greatful I recovered each deer. In my ignorance I now realise what I was caring the past two seasons was totally unethical(for me).

There is something major that I cannot overlook in this thread either, and that is deer size. Here a big buck 3.5+ years old has a massive bone structure, it needs to carry 250-300 lb when he is fat and bulking up in Sept/Oct. I would love to see a representation of mature buck's ribs from around the country. I bet they vary a LOT. (I am not blaming my occurances just on tough ribs tho[8D])






Come on, nobody here would ask a loaded question.[8D]